


nothing is infinite (not even loss)

by fisherqueens



Category: Dead Space
Genre: Asylums, Blood, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Self Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-09
Updated: 2013-09-09
Packaged: 2017-12-26 01:34:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/960033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fisherqueens/pseuds/fisherqueens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>isaac has a new home. (pre-dead space 2)</p>
            </blockquote>





	nothing is infinite (not even loss)

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone who terrifies you is sixty-five percent water.  
> And everyone you love is made of stardust, and I know sometimes  
> you cannot even breathe deeply, and  
> the night sky is no home, and  
> you have cried yourself to sleep enough times  
> that you are down to your last two percent, but
> 
> nothing is infinite,  
> not even loss.
> 
> You are made of the sea and the stars, and one day  
> you are going to find yourself again.
> 
> ( f. butler )

Some nights he dreams of the days he was treated like expendable meat.

  
-  
  
He splashes cold water on his face and tucks himself into bed beside her. She is warmth, her hair soft against his cheek as he drifts in and out. He should know better that the night will always sink its teeth into him like some starstruck blood disease swimming in every capillary and bolting from every nerve ending.   
  
-  
  
He sleeps in a cold drawer until they prick him with something warm, slowly heat his blood until his eyes open and he jerks just a bit. It's that and then the first breath of air. It's stale and cold and his eyes lull open as one nurse takes him slowly by the shoulders. His arms are wrapped tightly into place and he's made to stand up. He's given a moment, he realizes, to calibrate his own balance in small shuffling steps as he wakes up. It's difficult, but he can do it, he knows he's capable of at least this. Everything is so... so  _sharp_  when he wakes up, it's overwhelming. The cold white light over his head makes him squint, the scratch of pen on his patient file briefly.  
  
Some things never change like the age old ink on paper.  
  
Some things never change like the nightmares.  
  
They give him water (just a bit, just a bit) and lead him down the long white hall. It's where he slowly becomes unwound. He knows this walk, no matter how long they put him down  _he knows this walk_  and he starts to balk. "No--" he says and it's always the first words out of his mouth. It continues with a hoarse "No, no, no" or "I'm not going." He'll shake his head. "It hurts." But they keep walking him and he tries to dig his heels into the floor, but it doesn't work because they've kept him in soft shoes and it hurts. He doesn't want the machine, he doesn't want the questions, not the ink blots, not the yelling, not the smell of corpses. Sometimes he'll whisper to an attendant-- _Don't make me go back. I want to go home. I want to go home_.  
  
Most of the time they look at him with sad, quiet smiles.  
  
"This is your home."  
  
He'll shake his head. This isn't home. This is just a cold box and the dark and he cries because Nicole is dead and he  _lives in a box._  
  
On these days (nights?) they strip him down and a doctor comes in. He'll check his teeth and mouth and body for sores. He'll push and pull and press and spread and make him scream because  _stop touching me stop touching me stop touching me stop it please shedoesn'tlikeitwhenyoutouchme_. But they don't care--his protests aren't vocalized, they are internalized at this point. He used to shout. Now he simply. Doesn't. He's withdrawn and catatonic, eyes glassy and blue. That's the best way to ignore cold hands digging in to make sure he isn't deteriorating in his box.   
  
-   
  
It is around this point that he thrashes, fights. He remembers bruising and crying out and the feeling of hands, hands, hands pinning him down and  _No I don't want to go back in the machine. Not again. Please don't._  He screams it as he twists in the sheets, sweat beading heavily along his brow, down his neck. He clutches sheets, lets out a cry because he swears, he swears he can feel it now, amnesia, cover-ups, pills peeling back. There is pain there and shock and breathlessness and he doesn't wake until the very last moment when they put him in the box again and he fights the feeling of stasis over-coming his body.  
  
He bolts up and a scream tears from his throat and he clutches at himself, as if trying to rend the skin and muscle from his bones, pull himself apart because being put together again isn't worth the nightmares. If he could maybe compress himself into only atoms, into only air, maybe it'd be better. Do particles of a person dream? Do they become dreams?  
  
When Isaac breathes, it is between broken sobs and soft fragments. He sings and it is soft, a lullaby in a broken and tired tone, every syllable a consolation, a memory-- _twinkle twinkle little star... how I wonder what you are..._


End file.
